Tuesday, September 30, 2003

Lots of Writing

I’m back again and can lay down some writing now that I finished my sociobiology paper. Well, at least I’ll be back until I have to start work on my Business Ethics case study that’s due next week. It seems like that as soon as I finish one paper it’s right on to the next one. When will it ever stop??? Well, right around December 20th, I guess, but that’s still a ways off (but a little too close for comfort). I don’t want my college career to end. ‘Nuff said.

I seem to have a real problem when it comes to writing essays for my classes. The last one that I wrote (the sociobiology paper) was supposed to be around 750 words, but could be a little longer if it needed to be. I sat down to work on mine and once I had finished I checked the document’s stats—2400+ words. Eek, how do I manage to expound that much wordage on a supposedly short, easy essay? I had the same problem with my paper before that. My prof wanted a short, 3 page-ish look at Descartes. I ended up at 8……after I cut out some of the stuff I wrote. What amazes me is that I don’t feel like they’re that über-long. Later this week, if I don’t have time to write something new, I might just post my Descartes paper for you all to read, if you care to, of course.

I can see my next paper ending up being a little shorter, though, because I have come into possession of a very wonderful time-killer, Halo for PC. It’s finally out and I managed to secure a copy. I’ve played through the first level and it’s so sweet! Kristin used to play this on Xbox and then rant and rave to me about how good it was, but I haven’t gotten around to getting it for that system (because of the continuing $50 price tag). Now, the PC version has finally been released and I seem to have a reason to play video games on my computer again.

The only beef I have with Halo for the PC is that it’s unbelievably resource intensive. I only have an Athlon XP 1700+, 512 mb DDR ram, and a GeForce 3 64 mb card in my computer (which isn’t too shabby), so I’m stuck turning down some of the nifty graphics so that it runs smoothly. I’ll live with it, though, because I can play it with a mouse/keyboard combo, which works much better for me in first person shooters, instead of a controller.

Speaking of my computer, I’ve had an odd problem as of late with Trillian (my instant messaging client). It takes all of my IM contacts (AOL, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and IRC) and puts them into one program so that I don’t have an assload of IM programs running at one time. The weird thing about it, though, is that for some reason the option to set my status to not away is gone. I’m always stuck in my “away” state. So if any of you have been trying to IM me and I’m always away, there’s nothing I can really do about it, so just IM away and hope that I’m there. I really wish I knew why it does this, but I’ll just deal since I’m too lazy to really care too much about how my dumb IM client works.

Thursday, September 25, 2003

A Tragedy in Rocori

Just about everyone who lives in the St. Cloud area, and even Minnesota for that matter, know about the school shooting that happened in Cold Spring yesterday. Actually most of the country knows since it made its way on to CNN here. So what is there to say? One dead, one injured, and the student who performed the deed is in custody after a coach talked him out of the gun. That’s the facts, but the ramifications here in the St. Cloud area could be huge.

I was hoping that this, my final semester of school, would go without scandal or tragedy, unlike most of my previous four years here. There was Josh’s disappearance last year, the summer before two students died in Lake Sag on campus, and the sexual scandals involving the SJU monks. It’s been crazy, but I thought maybe we’d used up all of our bad karma for a while. I guess I was wrong.

What makes this shooting, more so than any of the previous school shootings in the US, scarier for me is the proximity to SJU where I live. Cold Spring is right down the road from us. I work at the high school here at St. John’s and all this morning I have been finding myself wondering what I would have done, or what the students and teachers would have done, if the student had gone to school here. I have such a hard time imagining any of the students that I supervise here bringing a gun into school and starting to shoot his or her classmates, but that’s exactly what happened right down the road.

This shooting hasn’t seemed to have much of an effect upon the kids here at the prep school, which is probably good. I would rather it be forgotten instead of publicized. Whenever a horrific deed, such as this one, is plastered all over the news I always fear that some kid seeing that will want to go and do the same thing. If that kid on tv can go and shoot the people he doesn’t like, then why can’t I? That’s simply a thought I don’t want entering any kid’s mind.

Since this also happened in a small, country school, I also think back to my high school where my little brother, Ryan, still goes. What would have happened if something like this would have occurred there? I really don’t want to think about it, but when a tragedy happens in close proximity to you it is much harder to detach yourself from the situation and say that it could never happen near you—because it did happen near you! Heck, Kristin taught religion class at Rocori, the high school this happened at. She taught some of the students there.

I think I’ve probably talked this subject over enough, but it simply is hard to believe that this happened so close. It’s sad that it had to happen, but I am very thankful that it didn’t happen here.

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Sometimes I Need a Time Machine

Yes, I realize the gigantic time span that has passed since the last post I’ve put up, but I have been very busy working on a research paper covering Descartes for my Modern Philosophy class. Now that I have finished that I’ll be able to post more, well, until I’m stuck working on my sociobiology paper which I should be starting…right…about…now! But before I do, I will catch you up (and I promise to give a more concerted effort to make posts more often). Let’s get to the rundown of the last, oh, week or so, shall we?

Thursday: The Minnesota Orchestra. What can I say? Un-frickin-believable! I have been to many a band concert, many punk and metal concerts, some folk & blues concerts, a piano & cello performance, and many others, but never before have I seen an entire orchestra perform. I was simply amazed and awe-struck by the sheer beauty of their performance. Every note was precise, every piece filled with emotion, and everything simply much better than I expected. Kudos are definitely in order for Kristin for proposing that we go.

Friday: Since Kristin’s birthday was going to be on Monday the 22nd, she wouldn’t really get a chance to do much celebrating because of class and whatnot so we decided to have a birthday party for her at our place. A bunch of her friends and my friends all came over and we had a wonderful time playing DDR, watching Old School, and simply hanging out. It was really a lot of fun.

Saturday: The Johnnies had their first home game against the University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire. We haven’t been able to beat them the last few years so I was a little bit worried that we might not pull this one off. Thankfully, I was horribly wrong and we had a stellar victory over them. After the game, Kristin and I had contemplated going to see Underworld but my brother and most of the reviews I read said it wasn’t really that great. We didn’t want to waste $10 going to see it if it was going to suck. Instead, we went for a walk around the lake to the chapel and took the rest of the night easy at my place.

Sunday: The parents, Ryan, and Grandmama came up to visit for Kristin’s birthday. We met them at Fazoli’s for lunch, which is our usual eating place when my ‘rents come to visit. After that we sort of splintered and my mom, grandmamma & Kristin went to the mall to shop while dad, Ryan, and myself went back to my apartment to watch the Vikings take down Detroit. When the girls got back from shopping we let Kristin open her gifts and had some wonderfully chocolatey chocolate cake. The rest of the time we had a pretty lengthy tournament of Tao Feng. Kristin, of course, was the undisputed champ. She continually kicks my hinder at the game, and surprisingly she also pummeled Ryan over and over again (I think he only won maybe 2 or 3 times out of like 20 or so). We even managed to get my dad to try out the game. For never really playing video games he picked it up pretty good and nearly beat Ryan a few times. I’m thinking as Ryan gets older his prowess for video games might be waning.

Monday: Kristin’s birthday!!! Unfortunately, she had classes all morning and night class that night so she only had the afternoon to really sit back and enjoy her day. I went over to visit her for her b-day (of course) and we went to grab lunch and then proceeded to watch some quality episodes of the 90’s X-Men cartoon. We seem to do a lot of that lately since I picked up the entire 76 episode series run on VCD a little while back. After we finish up the X-Men run, we have the entire run of Gargoyles to watch as well. Wow, talk about being uber-nerds!

Tuesday: Nothing really special happened Tuesday. I had work, then class, then frisbee practice, then volleyball games, then I worked out, came home, did homework while watching the Twins clinch their division, and proceeded to go to bed early. Long days without a solid nap make it imperative that I get to bed early lest I be very cranky the next day.

Well, that gets us all caught up to today. Whew, I didn’t know if I was going to make it or not. Anyhow, you know how I said at the beginning I had a sociobiology paper to do? Yeah, I’m going to go work on that now. Ciao.

Thursday, September 18, 2003

Robot Vampires

I finally got around to beating Mech Assault! It was an extremely fun game, but a couple of the missions were really tough and frustrating so I almost gave up, but I just couldn’t because it’s just so darn fun! I only wish that I had Xbox Live so that I could play it online, but there’s no way I want to shell out $50 for the Live kit and then pay $10 a month just to play a couple of my games online.

Feeling that there was a gaping whole in my life now—that being I was lacking my video game addiction, I decided to start playing Silent Hill 2. It’ll be a little bit of a change from the pure action and robot carnage that Mech Assault was, but I’m kind of looking forward to something that is a little more thinking and a little less trigger-finger oriented. Kristin also found a new game to play while we were in town yesterday—Bloodrayne. We managed to pick it up for $15 that we split between the two of us. It looks like it’ll be pretty cool from the little bit I was watching Kristin play it.

We picked up Bloodrayne yesterday on one of our weekly trips that we take into St. Cloud when we need to get away from campus, walk around, and people watch. Another ulterior motive for going to town yesterday was that the new Krispy Kreme had finally opened. Before Tuesday, the closest Krispy Kreme was in Maple Grove, a good 45 minute drive away. We splurged and brought back two dozen to share with our apartment-mates since John and Jared cooked supper for us last night. It was great having something that didn’t need to be microwaved (we had spaghetti).

……Crap……the computer lab here at work just had a quick power outage and since we aren’t on battery back up in the lab I just lost all that I wrote from here on. Grrrr……Well, basically it was just me complaining about how much homework I have lately in comparison to other semesters and how it probably amounts to all the extra reading that is a part of upper division philosophy classes. I really don’t want to type it all out again since I already did once, so you’ll just have to survive with a short thought today. Damn computers………and prep school……

Monday, September 15, 2003

Starting Strong

It’s good to see that the Vikings have started off their season with a 2-0 start. I always have high hopes for the Vikes, but I really didn’t expect a whole lot from them this year, especially after last year’s horrible performance. It’s also good to see that my last season of volleyball here at SJU is off to a good start, as we won our first game.

It was pretty apparent that we were all a little rusty as we had many communication errors and some flow problems, but it felt so good to have the team together and playing again. We put ourselves in all three leagues this season so every Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday night I’ll have a game. It definitely feels like college again now that my usual routine is kicking in—work, classes, frisbee/volleyball/lifting, sleep, repeat x5, weekend. I really think I would have a hard time getting anything done without a schedule. If not for a deadline for getting things in, I will let them go indefinitely.

Speaking of deadlines, my first paper of the semester is soon due. The preliminaries of the paper have to be in tomorrow, and if not for Karl asking me what I was doing, I probably would have forgotten to do it. We are writing our first paper in Modern Philosophy on Descartes’ Meditations, which deal with existence and epistemology. I have found the reading very interesting (much more so than most of my other classes), and am even looking forward to writing my paper (which obviously will criticize some portion of Descartes—I’ve come to gain the reputation with the philosophy department as being overly cynical, but at least I don’t believe everything at first glance). Hmmm…I’m guessing none of you really care about philosophy much so I’ll move along.

I found a very interesting article while I was reading the news this morning (you can read it here). It talks about the differences between the movie industry and the music industry and how they are handling piracy, customer relations, and pricing. It’s amazing (and refreshing) to see how well the movie industry is doing with their more customer-friendly marketing and relations, while the music industry continues it’s downward spiral as it alienates customers more and more each day.

Ever since the RIAA started handing out lawsuits to casual users of file trading software, I have decided to not buy any more cds, and I haven’t in well over 2 months. I have also started going through my cd collection and am selling off many of the discs that I don’t listen to anymore. I really want to distance myself from such a greedy and heartless organization. If I really want to hear a song or cd I’ll borrow it from a friend, but there isn’t too much for new music that I like to listen to anyways. There isn’t a whole lot new talent in the heavy metal music circle lately. Just look at the recent crap that’s been released like Metallica’s new disc or any of the generic radio-rock cds out there.

I haven’t bought a dvd in a while either, but that’s mainly because I haven’t had the money and because I have a decent backlog of dvds already stockpiled in my room to watch. If there’s a movie I love, I’ll probably buy it simply because you get so much more for your money with a dvd than you do with a music cd. As much as I’d like to sit here and bash the RIAA, I think the article above does a good enough job……well, that and I have to go to class.

Friday, September 12, 2003

Two Years Later

So yesterday was September 11th. I didn’t exactly want to write something yesterday because I knew that everyone would already be inundated with a plethora of 9-11 thoughts, propaganda, memories, and empty speculation. I really didn’t want to even say anything to the topic of 9-11 this year in the hopes that we’d all just forget about it soon, but for some reason everyone wants to keep remembering it and, it almost seems, celebrating it.

I walked into work at the prep school yesterday and the first thing I saw was a sign with a picture of the two towers on fire with the tagline “Never Forget” underneath. I continued walking down the hall and then down the stairs to the computer lab and as I did, I noticed these signs were plastered throughout the school. What an odd thing to put up. The signs also raise a lot of questions about what exactly they mean.

You have a picture of the two burning towers—a result of one of the greatest acts of terrorism in our time. In response to that act, the US went on a rampage against “terror”. In that rampage, we decimated Afghanistan, tore apart Iraq, and are now occupying it. I’m sure the sign is meant to convey to us that we shouldn’t forget the people killed in those two towers, but if this is a memorial about lost lives shouldn’t we be thinking about all of the people killed as a result of this action?
Obviously I’m not asking you to have remorse for Bin Laden or anything, but we should remember that as a result of 9-11 the US went on a killing rampage. We, somewhat justifiably, killed terrorists in Afghanistan to eliminate the threat of further terrorism to our country and, to a degree, to exact revenge for the tragedy that was the twin towers. Most people will not see this as a bad thing, and for the most part I don’t think it was too bad, but what we went on to do afterwards is what really gets me wondering.

Tuesday, September 09, 2003

Apathetic Duality

This year of college definitely feels different than past years. There’s a distinct change in everything, however subtle, but it’s still there. I tried to think about what it might be while I was watching Monday night football last night and came to a few conclusions around the third quarter. That was about the time that I knew my fantasy stats were good enough for the week to beat Jared and grab my first fantasy win. The entire weekend we were very close with the lead swinging back and forth between us very often.

Anyhow, why are things different? This first thing I’ve noticed is that a load of people I used to hang out with are now gone—graduated or abroad. The friends that I do have that are still here at school, outside of my roommates, have seemed distant so far this semester. I am wondering if this is my fault, their fault, or just the nature of growing out of my college phase. I don’t feel I’ve made as much of a concerted effort to see people so far, but neither have they. It’s almost as if there’s some odd apathy dualism in my relationships with the people up here.

Do I really crave the attention of all of the people I’m losing contact with? Well, no, not all the time, but I do sometimes miss their company. I’ll live, and most of the time it doesn’t bother me, but occasionally it does, and that’s when I start wondering about things like I am now. It might also be that the semester isn’t into full swing yet. My volleyball league hasn’t started yet so I haven’t really seen anyone on my team. Frisbee practices are now segregated so I don’t really get a chance to interact with my female friends on the team and it feels like I’m being alienated by one of the captains, possibly because he doesn’t want my presence on the team. I’m still in my studious mode where I want to get all my homework done well and on time (this mode will probably wear out in the next couple of weeks) so homework, mainly reading, takes up a lot of my spare time.

So where am I going with all of this? I don’t think even I remember right now. I guess it’s just different this semester and maybe that’s what I get for coming back and trying to prolong my college experience. That would be an interesting irony, but not an unexpected one, especially considering one of the more frequent greeting that I’ve received the last few weeks has been, “hey, how’s it going? You visiting?” or “hey, didn’t you graduate last year?” I think it’ll be an interesting semester at least, and probably a quick one because that’s always how it seems to go.

Monday, September 08, 2003

Ante Up

I may not get to the casino in a while, but I have found a way to have some great gambling fun right here on the good ‘ol SJU campus. Friday night was gambling night at our place……at least it was supposed to be at our place, but it got moved to Amanda’s apartment in St. Joseph. I was initially a little bit pissed off that it got moved, but there was a good reason, which I will explain later.

Before our gambling escapades, I had to take Kristin in to work at Things Remembered in the mall. We grabbed some food at Arby’s and picked up dimes for playing poker and then she got to get down to business engraving things for a few hours. While she was at work I ran a bunch of errands—took back a dvd to Target, picked up a few things at the comic shop, got some cords for hooking up Kristin’s VCR and DVD player to her tv at Best Buy, and picked up a bottle of whiskey as a gift for one of our friends who is celebrating her birthday tomorrow. After I finished with my errands, I went over to Barnes & Noble to do a bunch of my homework (I know, I was doing homework on a Friday night, so I’m a nerd, live with it).

I then picked up Kristin from work, grabbed some of her friends from St. Ben’s and took them over to my place to play some poker. When we got there, there was a note saying that the party got moved to Amanda’s. That meant we had to drive all the way back into St. Joe again. Annoying, but not too bad. I asked John why it got moved and this is why:

There is this really, and I mean really, annoying & crude girl that frequents our apartment (much to my dismay) and when she was over that afternoon Jared said something about playing poker. She instantaneously latched onto the idea, invited herself to come, and wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise. If she was going to be there, most of the people who were going to play were not going to come so the only choice was to move the get together to another location without telling her. I’m so glad we did move it because I would have killed her within 10 minutes if I had to play poker with her.

Once our games got underway, it only took about an hour for both Jared and myself to lose our $5 that we each had. Since I was out of money, Kristin took over playing and doubled her money. We were both so happy about it. In the future, I think I’ll let Kristin do all the card playing, except for black jack since that’s my favorite. Everyone had a great time and I think we’re planning to do it again sometime soon, but this time we won’t even speak of it around Sarah.

Friday, September 05, 2003

Play the Find the Freshmen Game

Yesterday was the “Involvement at the Mall” day over at St. Ben’s. Every year they have this day so that all of the new freshmen can see all of the different clubs and organizations that are available on our two campuses. I enjoy going every year for a couple of reasons. My freshman year I went to see what was out there, duh. Sophomore year up to the present, however, I’ve had a few other reasons for going—free stuff and laughing at all the new freshmen.

Free stuff always rocks, and this year I again grabbed a whole bunch of junk for our apartment—a bunch of cups (since we only have glass glasses & coffee mugs right now), a bunch of cans of pop, some ramen, way too much candy (my tummy was telling me how much it hated me last night when I got home), random huge t-shirts, a bunch of bathroom junk samples, a few slices of free pizza, some highlighters & pens, and a key chain. I think that’s most all of it. It’s also fun knowing all the people at their respective booths so that way you don’t have to feign interest to grab the free stuff—you just grab.

While making the rounds (the first time through with Kristin and the second with Megan) it’s so easy to pick out all of the new freshmen. We should have an orientation session that actually teaches them not to act like dumb new freshmen. The first giveaway that someone is a freshman is if they have one of those necklace things that you put your keys and wallet on the end of. So many freshman have these to take their room keys, wallet, and ID with them. Haven’t they ever heard of pockets? The whole key-chain necklace automatically pegs you as a freshman so don’t wear them!

Another way to pick out the freshmen is simply by looking at their facial expressions. If they look confused—freshmen. If they look excited about a club booth—freshmen. If they’re talking to the people at the booths instead of grabbing free stuff like a maniac—freshmen. Actually asking to grab the free stuff—freshmen. Going through the booths all dolled up like they’re going on their first date—female freshmen. Dressed more preppy than Zac from Saved by the Bell and having hair that contains half a bottle of gel—male freshmen. Talking to their friends about how cool it’s going to be going to the first meeting of a club or organization—freshmen. Laughing at all of the stupid freshmen—me!

I know I was a dumb freshman back in the day and I’m sure I was some upperclassmen’s piece of amusement on more than one occasion, so I don’t really feel all that bad about making fun of the freshmen each year. I don’t know if I exactly fell into the “stupid freshman” category, though, since most of the friends that I made were all a year older than me. I must have been operating at a sophomore level my freshman year. Now, I’m just really, really old. It’s so odd being the oldest person whenever I hang out with people on campus. I’ve seen a couple of people I graduated with on campus lately, but they don’t go to school anymore, they’ve just been visiting friends or significant others. I suppose that’s how I’ll be too once January comes and I’m actually done-done with college. Thank goodness that Kristin will still have two and a half years of college left so I can still live vicariously through her!

Thursday, September 04, 2003

Stupid Ass Dean

I’m sure that there aren’t a whole lot of you out there that religiously check the music reviews I put up here, but for those of you that do I’m sorry there hasn’t been much put up lately, but I’m more sorry to tell you that instead of the number of reviews picking up, they’re going to be fewer put up. This is simply because of one small change at work.

Last year I did most of the reviews while I listened to cds on my mp3 player at work over at the SJU prep school. Since I’m just the computer lab attendant most of my job is just sitting there being available if a problem comes up or if a student has a question. The last two years I’ve always brought my mp3 player with so that I didn’t get too bored while working. It wasn’t a problem, no one cared, and everyone was happy.

This year the prep school now has a new librarian and a new dean of students. The second day that I was here at work the dean of students came to introduce herself and then told me that listening to music was detracting from my job. It made me seem “inaccessible” to the students. Well, for the first two years I was here I didn’t listen to my mp3 player and I got about 2 questions a day. The last two years I was here I listened to my mp3 player and still got about 2 questions a day. The mp3 didn’t affect my job at all! Now this new dean thinks that she knows everything already even though I’ve been working here for four years already.

It’s one of my biggest pet peeves when someone assumes they know what is best when they’ve had no experience with it or have never even taken the change to examine what someone does. What also pisses me off is liars. She also fell into that category. She told me one of the reasons that I shouldn’t wear headphones is because Lorri (the secretary in the office on the top floor—I work on the second floor) said it wasn’t good for me to wear them. Well, she’s been working here for the amount of time I’ve been here and she hasn’t minded them at all. Also, I only actually ever see Lorri like once a week, if that. I only go to her to get my time cards and the keys if I need them. Why lie about something like that. If you’re going to lie, at least make it believable by saying the new librarian doesn’t like them or something. I’m really quite glad that this will be my last semester working here because this change in staff is no doubt going to make my once easy and relaxing job a pain is the ass……a boring pain in the ass.

On a much better note, yesterday I received a wonderful package in the mail—the entire run of the 90’s cartoon version of the X-Men. Kristin had mentioned a little while back how much she missed that show so I went on ebay looking for it and found it for relatively cheap (about $35 with shipping). It’s the entire 76 episode run on 26 vcd’s. Of course, as soon as I told Kristin that I received them in the mail we sat down and started watching. It’s now our goal to watch all 76 before the semester is over. I think we might be able to do it. I’ve also contacted another seller on ebay and I’m trading a set of the X-Men series for a set of the cartoon run of Gargoyles from the 90’s. This was another of Kristin’s favorite cartoons. I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t the biggest fan. I’m much more stoked about having the X-Men set.

Monday, September 01, 2003

Minnesota State Hell

I’ve been putting off actually writing anything because I just haven’t had the want to put anything up lately. Maybe it’s the transition back to college or maybe it’s just me being lazy, but I have had no drive whatsoever to put anything up, until this weekend came. Even after I had something I wanted to talk about, though, I really didn’t want to write anything because I feared it would be way too negative. It still might be, but I figured since I’ve given myself some time to reflect on some things it would be better.

For a few weeks now my family had planned on going to the state fair and I had planned on meeting them there with Kristin for a fun day out and about. Saturday was the day we decided to go so we met up there at about noon. This was the beginning of a very long day, at least for me. I can honestly say to you right now that I will be very hard pressed to go to the state fair again. I had never been the biggest fan of the state fair (or fairs in general), but I had never actively disliked the fair. That changed after this year.

I don’t want to sound completely negative about the fair so I would like to point out some of the good and/or fun things that were at the fair. First, I enjoyed the food. I had an ice cream cone from the dairy booth, a pronto pup (which Kristin thinks is different than a corn dog, but that is a conversation for another time), and a butt load of fries from some booth that sold only fries. I also liked seeing the dogs in the pets tent. The art was also interesting to look at, even if most of the art that I liked was the style that most people disliked (I go for darker and more macabre art as opposed to traditional and uplifting art). It was also nice to be able to visit with my family during the few opportunities we had.

See, there’s some good stuff about the fair……but not enough to come even close to outweighing the negatives inherent with this once a year event. By the end of the day I had reached limit and could not take any more of the fair. I felt a little bit dirty for being at the fair and having to give in to all of the price gouging and whatnot that goes on there. Let me explain the reasons why the fair sucks.

Ø First, there is the price to park. We got there around noon so it was really hard finding a parking spot and when we did, it cost us $25 for our two cars. It would have cost more if my dad hadn’t talked them down. Some random business charged my parents $15 to park in their parking lot and then, on a whim, decided to up the price to $20 to gouge people even more when I got there. My parents talked them down to $10 since I parked in a really crappy spot. Insane!

Ø Now that we had already thrown down $25 in parking, we had to pay $48 for all of us to get in. $8 a person for entry into the fair. Ludicrous! Almost $75 was spent just to get into the damn fair. For that much money each of us should have received a Segway to ride around on all day.

Ø Since I’m talking about money, let’s look at the prices of food—astronomical. Why can’t there just be at least one vendor that doesn’t rape every customer on the price of their food. Pronto Pup = $2.75. A 20 oz. of pop = $2.00 or more. Large order of fries = $8.50. I almost wanted to starve myself for the entire day so that I didn’t have to give any money to the crooks selling their food there, but hunger won over my resolve unfortunately.

Ø The amount of people contained within the fairgrounds must have doubled the population of Delaware. I swear I’ve never seen so many people in one place before. Everywhere, people. Any open space was hard to come by. Any building you went in, it would take you double the amount of time it usually would to go through them because there were so many people packed into each one.

Ø The amount of people also created havoc when trying to walk anywhere because they would constantly be cutting you off or bumping into you and it made the simple act of walking from one place to another a pain in the ass.

Ø I went to the fair to spend time with my family and visit with them, but that wasn’t really possible except for the few times we got to sit down because we were always separated and engulfed in tides of people. I wanted to hang out with them, but it was pretty much impossible and because of that it seemed like the fair was a waste of a day. We could have spent it sitting at a McDonalds for all I care because I just wanted to spend some time with my family, not fight with crowds.

Ø There was no real content to the fair. There’s a few interesting places to look through, but most of the fair is just food vendors and companies advertising their stuff. If I wanted to look at a bunch of cars for sale, some lawnmowers, or hot tubs I’d go to dealers that sold them.

Ø The people at the fair are gross. There’s so many nasty people there and people that don’t know how to dress. At first seeing all of them is interesting and funny, but over the period of the day it just became unfunny, sad, and gross. There are so many people there that dress so slutty and nasty that I was constantly appalled by their appearances. Do people not know what they look like?

Well, I think I’ve covered a good amount of reasons as to why the fair will probably never be graced by my presence again. I just wanted a nice, relaxing day with my family, but instead it turned into a stressful day (at least it was for myself because I can’t take the large crowds and wasting money). In conclusion, don’t ever EVER go to the Minnesota State Fair because it’s simply not worth it.